We’re happy to announce that IronMQ, one of Iron.io’s premier application services, is now included as a service within the Rackspace Cloud Tools program. We’re especially proud of this milestone because in addition to being multi-platform and multi-language, we are now also multi-cloud.

IronMQ is a hosted message queue for orchestrating data and events within cloud apps and between systems. Accessible through simple API calls, the service provides high-performance messaging without having to manage servers or maintain infrastructure.

IronMQ – An Essential Component Optimized for Rackspace Developers

An easy-to-use, scalable and durable messaging system is essential for building loosely-coupled components and non-blocking data and event handling. Cloud apps need to exchange large volumes of data between internal processes as well as with other applications, sites, and services. With this volume and increasing number of interchanges, a middle layer is needed so that senders and receivers can work asynchronously and independently from the activities of others.

For example, uploading a new document to a cloud service might cascade a number of other actions. Message queues are a primary way to orchestrate these types of actions both internally and when interfacing with other systems. Developers are using IronMQ to process massive amounts of streaming data, connect mobile apps to backend systems, orchestrate sequencing and processing flows, sync with legacy systems, and handle many other critical messaging needs.

Including IronMQ within the Rackspace cloud means that developers have access to a high-performance hosted message queue that runs in the same cloud as their applications and datastores. Rackspace developers not only gain an essential component of the modern cloud stack but also one that has been optimized to work within their cloud environment.

Easy Decision + Developers Benefit

Making the decision to bring IronMQ to Rackspace took all of a few seconds. Rackspace is a key player in cloud infrastructure and is making some very strong moves with OpenStack and other initiatives. When the proposal came up in the product meeting, it was a quick set of +1’s around the table.

Actually standing up the IronMQ service within the Rackspace cloud, however, wasn’t as simple. Don’t get us wrong. Rackspace is easy to work with both technically and on a personal level. But bringing an elastic and massively scalable service to new cloud infrastructure took some doing. We’re fortunate in that we have a great team that thrives on building high-performance systems and so they readily took to the challenge.

The nice thing about us doing the heavy lifting is that Rackspace developers get to build durable message handling into their applications with simple API calls and without having to worry about managing servers or dealing with redundancy, fault-tolerance, scalability, and other system concerns.

Rackspace Option in the IronMQ HUD (Dashboard)

Rackspace + IronMQ

The benefits of IronMQ included as a Rackspace Cloud Tool are not difficult to see. We share with Rackspace a similar vision for what the future of IT looks like.

Rackspace Cloud Hosting

Rock-solid cloud provisioning

Managed service capabilities

100,000 strong user base

Fanatical customer service

IronMQ

Hosted message queue

Easy to use/flexible interfaces

Durable, secure, massively scalable

Multi-platform, multi-language, multi-cloud

An Additional Note

One great thing about partnering with Rackspace is that they’re known for their fanatical customer support. We don’t claim to be at their level but it’s certainly something we’re striving for. If you’re a Rackspace developer, we urge you to give the service a try and let us know what you think. if you have questions or need some help, stop into our public chat room. You’ll find many on Team Iron hanging out there.